The Chemical Weapons Taboo

In the last days of World War II, Adolf Hitler, consumed with rage at the prospect of defeat, issued orders for a “scorched earth” policy that would have turned Germany into a virtual wasteland. German power plants, the transportation system, industrial facilities, and all the other infrastructure necessary to a modern society were to be systematically destroyed in order to deny their use to the Allies. Despite this demand for Armageddon (which, fortunately, was stymied by the actions of German armaments minister Albert Speer, among others), the Führer never ordered the use of the one measure that might, even at that late date, have at least temporarily forestalled defeat: chemical weapons.

The Chemical Weapons Taboo is an attempt to explain such an anomaly, as well as the general reluctance with which other states have contemplated the use of chemical weapons, even in the midst of total wars that featured all sorts of other dreadful devices, including the mass destruction of cities by aerial bombing. As author Richard Price writes, his essay is “a meditation on the relationship between morality and technology, particularly the exercise and restraint of violence in world politics. To this end it explores the development and operation of the norm in international society which proscribes the use of chemical weapons” (p. ix).

Various explanations have been offered for the general nonuse of chemical weapons in battle, at least since World War I. These include the doubtful utility of such weapons, given the vagaries of weather and of other factors, fears of retaliation should one side initiate the use of chemical warfare, and, finally, an instinctive revulsion toward employing a technology that seems peculiarly horrible and insidious in its effects, a type of poison, any variety of which has long been considered dishonorable in the conduct of war. Interestingly, one reason commonly given for Hitler’s not ordering the use of chemical weapons was that he himself had been the victim of a gas attack in World War I and indeed suffered temporary blindness as a result.

Price gives some credit to these factors, but also finds them insufficient in explaining the seemingly deep-rooted opposition to the use of chemical weapons in wartime. He employs a “constructivist methodology” to suggest that the norm against such weapons is actually a result of an extended “discourse” in which often-conflicting values, considerations of self-interest, accidents of personality and politics, and a host of other variables informing the social dialogue on the uses of technology eventually led to a general acceptance of this particular norm. His basic argument therefore is that the taboo against chemical weapons cannot just be explained in normative or rationalist terms, but rather represents a complex interaction over time that involved a number of other factors. He is particularly instructive in tracing how these factors have led to various international agreements curbing or even totally excluding the use of chemical warfare, including The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, the Geneva Protocol of 1925, and, most important, the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 (which has been signed by 160 countries).

This is certainly a very good book on an important topic. As a revised dissertation, however, it does contain many earmarks of that genre, particularly in its insistence on placing the data within an elaborate theoretical framework, and in its frequent lapse into opaque social science jargon. Typical is the author’s observation that “the chemical weapons taboo reveals the value of a genealogical analysis of meanings which searches out the relations of dominance and resistance, the processes of identity construction, and the contingencies involved in the operation of a moral discourse” (p. 164). Still, Price’s scholarship is impeccable, his analysis for the most part convincing, and his study at bottom a hopeful argument for humanity’s ability—at least on occasion—to remain the master rather than the servant of technological invention.